New Intellectual Property Resources Available

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) unveiled a new web-based intellectual property (IP) Awareness Assessment Tool designed to help manufacturers, businesses, entrepreneurs and independent inventors easily assess their knowledge of intellectual property (IP).

The IP Awareness Assessment Tool, a web-based tool designed to assess intellectual property knowledge and provide personalized training resources for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and inventors. The assessment is designed to help evaluate a user’s IP asset awareness and target areas specific to those related business needs.

Intellectual property is a key concern of businesses owners, who can secure significant competitive advantages by exercising the rights they hold to their innovations. However, many individuals are often unaware of their rights and miss the opportunities they can provide. USPTO and NIST MEP developed the IP Awareness Assessment Tool as a way to help educate innovators about these rights.

The tool enables users to measure and increase their awareness of IP issues, relevant to their creative projects and business goals. Users answer a comprehensive set of questions regarding IP, after which the tool provides a set of training resources tailored to specifically identified needs.The tool provides access to educational materials based on the assessment results.

The full assessment includes questions in five IP protection categories (Utility Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Trade Secrets, and Design Patents) plus five general IP categories - IP Strategies & Best Practices, Using Technology of Others, Licensing Technology to Others, International IP Rights and IP Asset Tracking. The questions presented in each category have been designed to discover the participant’s overall IP awareness as they relate to their IP asset protection needs.